While we recently saw information and photos leak to the net about the gsm BlackBerry dakota, you can think of the BlackBerry montana as dakota's CDMA sibling. With both the montana and dakota likely to hit the market under BlackBerry Bold Touch branding, this is RIM's thinnest BlackBerry ever with premium materials and finishes and a forged, machined stainless steel frame. The BlackBerry Montana's features and specs include:

They wouldn't go with a touchscreen if it's battery couldn't still handle a corporate lawyer's 26-hour work day on a single charge.
Even with a GHz+ processor it's not like it's a power-hungry dual core like droid devices need - the BB OS is far more efficient than that. It'll do just fine with the touch and battery life.

That said, how about an option to disable touch-screen features? That'd do the trick for extending battery life; you have the trackpad to use so, why not make it optional?

Perfecto..
But why minus the touch screen for battery saving & speed!? Why not just a better n enhanced battery to handle the screen =D guess the processor is anywayz good enough to be speedy as much!!
256 MB more Ram for front cam but do we have such netork to handle a video call!? (Notwithstanding wi-fi though!)

All in all great enhancements.. Magnetometer - accelerometer - proximity - Advanced OS 6.1 with OpelGL .. Whoa!! Take graphics to a whole new ethereal beauty man!!

It's actually quite intuitive. I do it all the time with the Torch, with the keyboard slid out. I use the keyboard, the optical trackpad and the touchscreen. Also, pinch to zoom, games, etc can all utilize the touchscreen.

It would love having a touch screen and a keyboard. Its hard to select text and click stuff very quickly with a track pad. I've gotten good with a trackpad but this cuts out all the crap and let's you get right to what you want and then let's you have a keyboard you can actually type on.

I came to a blackberry Bold from a Palm Treo 650, it wasn't much different than my 9700 in screen size and it was full touch with QWRTY keyboard. It was hard for me to not touch the screen on my old 9000 because I was so use to it. That was almost a deal breaker for me but the blackberry was to awesome to pass up, and a bold comparable to the 9000 with these specs and a touch screen would be nice.

So I am fairly new to fully understanding CDMA and GSM, but I realize that Verizon, my phone carrier, uses CDMA. With the Montana coming out under CDMA, does this mean that Verizon will be getting this or another carrier might get exclusive rights to it, or is it impossible to know for sure yet?

You're right, since it is CDMA, Verizon COULD carry this device but that doesn't mean that they will. Since that RIM is making CDMA and GSM variants, it looks like they are cutting down on the exclusive devices for carriers, which is definitely a good thing.

Ultimately, Verizon will have to decide IF they want to carry the device in their lineup.

Man, the device and specs look great. But I'll have to try it out for sure before I buy it. It's 6 inches long if the specs hold true, making it 1.5 inches longer than the BOLD 9000 but also thinner. Definitely will be taking advantage of VZW's new 14 day policy. But it looks darn good though!

This is pretty revolutionary for rim/blackberry. Reminds me of when I first saw the bold 9000. Didn't rogers get that as an early exclusive like at&t did with the torch?... I hope that happens again with the dakota :p

Screen resolution for the size of the screen is more than good, in fact it's great. Can't wait to see it.

I've been mulling whether or not to jump ship come iPhone Verizon 5 in the summer when my contract runs out..., however I love Blackberry too much. I really like my Bold 9650.

So take a (more or less) a Bold9000 frame, put in a kick ass processor and a touch screen. Maybe, just maybe someday QNX +Android Apps. Idunno, you might be looking at the greatest device ever made. Of course such a title will last about 3 months (w/ luck).

I'm glad RIM went from undisputed smartphone champion to undisputed smartphone chump inside of a year. It sparked some innovation (Bold Touch).

It does say GSM in the specs...I also believe the dimensions are wrong as well, if you look at the first exclusive news article that talks about all the different new phones coming out, for this phone it says it's 115 mm long, not 155 mm. That would make a little more sense...i hope lol

It brings it back to the first bold 9000 size which is/was too big. I loved it when curve 8900 and later bold 9700 arrived because they were just about the right size. I was begging for 9700's screen to be touch but going back to a bigger phone when i am sure in a year they will shrink it back to thr 9780's dimensions its something i will have to think about a lot even for an amazingly promising phone like this. I hope the dimensions will be a lot closer to the bold 9780/9700 rather than going back slightly bigger than 9000.

yessss. I saw an article on the Dakota but was worried it would only be for ATT now that i see it will be in CDMA format, me being a sprint customer i have a chance on having one. Its going to have that Bold 9000 form factor that i loved so much. and a touch screen? i'll be in heaven. Best Blackberry news ive heard all day ;). I just wish I didnt have to wait so long. I gotta be patient ugh!!!

This is why I will be leaving Blackberry. I am tired of waiting for the next great blackberry to arrive. Its never coming. A phone that is due out 8 months from now will have a 5mp camera and 8gb of storage. By that time their competition will probably have a 15 mp camera with 1 tb of storage. For me, they just keep refreshing the same devices over and over and just tweek them a little. They need to concede their market share of non business accounts

F-I-N-A-L-L-Y...I was just about to buy an old 8830 or a used 8700 because I cant TAKE this teensy tiny keyboard on my 9650 anymore. At least with this coming to Verizon (and you better vzw) I can hold off myself until it arrives. :) :) :)

Taking into account a few of the above comments......I am happy this is on its way out. But I may not get it.

Back when I got my Tour, it should have been the Bold. Now that I have a Bold, which i LOVE, I can sort of say it should have been the Montana.

While I will be very tempted to use my NE2 (my last one, due in May), I may hold out. We know at some point QNX and LTE are somewhere on the horizon. How far beyond this Spring (my NE2), I don't know. If I get the feeling that it will be a while longer, I would heavily consider this. I like the bigger form factor.

We'll see. I am not a huge fan of OS6 right now (back on .975), but with Theme Studio for OS6 now leaked, we know OS6 themes will be on their way.

This would be sweet, if it was released Q1 but a Q3 release is a little too late.

By the time this is released (assuming it's a Q3 release) other platforms will be running on LTE with dual cores.

RIM was too busy developing and promoting the Playbook for CES and did not release any information on new BB smartphones, their bread and butter. HUGE MISTAKE as the majority of the smartphone population assumes RIM has nothing in the pipeline for the immediate future.

I don't see many people buying the Dakota and Montana as most consumer markets (and slowly business markets) are buying up androids and iPhones.

"Good play :) but Android/iPhone fanboys whine about a lot more other things than just megapixels and storage space. Waltz down to BGR and take a look at the comments. By gosh those kids..."

Actually I have owned Blackberry exclusivly for the past few years on Verizon. (7250, 8830, 8330 curve, tour, 8530 curve and now Bold. I have never owned a iphone or droid. They just seem evolve so slowly. The increases are minimal and if a world where tech is outdated in a 3 month period, they release devices 3 years behind the times. The "impressive " specs that this phone has would be impressive compared to their competition 2 years ago. The camera is just one example The fact that they release devices with specs like a 3.2 mp camera while others are releasing 8mp. So if I was them knowing I am not going to release the phone until Q3, I would have a 10 mp in the specs knowing my comp will prob have it by then. Like I said the camera is just one example, but the logic applies to all of the specs

Hopefully Sprint and Verizon push RIM to make these phones compatibles with WiMax and LTE 4G respectively, if not and in the evoluting market, what's worth a new device almost coming towards the end of 2011 without 4G? Think RIM.

This is the form factor I've been wanting on Verizon since the Bold 9000 came out. This with QNX would be perfect! I guess I'll pass for now and wait until this one hits EOL sometime in Q2 or Q3 of 2012.

I sure do wish the market for cell phones and carriers was like Europe. In Europe the phones are sold seperately from the carrier. It is far more open like this and the consumer then therefore has a voice in that cell phone manufacturers have to compete for their customers. We wouldn't be waiting all the time if this were the scenario. Our situation in the United States truly sux!

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